


Like A Song

by bloodsongs



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Arthur is a prick regardless of how many times he's reborn, Band drama happens, Banter as musical foreplay, In which they're all in a band, M/M, Reincarnation, snarking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 17:12:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/600170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloodsongs/pseuds/bloodsongs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“So you’re the recommendation.” Arthur’s voice is haughty as he sizes Merlin up, shifting his guitar strap. “We don’t take on amateurs. How long have you been playing?”</p><p>Gwen sighs from where she’s leaning slightly on her microphone stand. “Arthur.”</p><p>Merlin makes a silent prayer for strength to handle impossible prats and stands up to stride towards Arthur, drawing himself to his full height. “Only all my life.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like A Song

**Author's Note:**

> I have a lot of reincarnation feels especially in the wake of the penultimate episode of Merlin. This is my strange way of fixing things. One of my headcanons has them ending up in a band together, unable to work out why they have this thing between them, what draws them to one another despite their barely knowing each other. 
> 
> But everything they say, everything they do, feels familiar and beloved; it haunts them as they try to pull away, as they try dating other people, only to stumble into each other again and again and go mad with jealousy and desire and need, because all they've ever wanted was each other, even when they didn't know.
> 
> Yegods.

“So you’re the recommendation.” Arthur’s voice is haughty as he sizes Merlin up, shifting his guitar strap. “We don’t take on amateurs. How long have you been playing?”

Gwen sighs from where she’s leaning slightly on her microphone stand. “Arthur.”

Merlin makes a silent prayer for strength to handle impossible prats and stands up to stride towards Arthur, drawing himself to his full height. “Only all my life.”

 

Their eyes meet, narrowed and hostile. Arthur’s blond and handsome and condescending; there’s no reason why Merlin should find that strangely appealing, but there you go.

“Just the one instrument?” Arthur drawls, looking up at him from beneath dark lashes, his face twisted in scorn. It doesn’t sit right on him. Merlin wonders how he’d look like if he smiled a crooked smile, if this rude boy in front of him is capable of sincerity.

He walks over to the keyboard in the studio and dusts it off. “Is there a problem? I understand you only needed someone for keyboard and synth.”

Arthur snorts and starts setting up his amplifier. “Not at all. Show me what you’ve got.”

Me, Merlin notes. Not us. “Is that a challenge?”

“What if it is?”

He quirks a smirk of his own and runs some soft arpeggios over the keyboard. “Consider it accepted. Has anyone ever told you that you need a peg taken down or two?”

This is of course the moment that Morgana, the bassist who’d contacted him about needing a keyboardist for their little three-piece band, walks in to them glaring daggers at each other, and laughs at Merlin’s comment. “Oh, that’s a good one.”

Arthur’s flushed with indignation. “Who do you think you are?”

Merlin stands up straighter. “No,” he begins slowly. “Who do you think you are? Did you leave a stick up your arse this morning? I came here to audition, not to get insults tossed at me every ten seconds. I’m not your verbal punching bag, and I hope for your bandmates’ sakes they don’t have to deal with this on a regular basis.”

Gwen snorts softly, and Morgana’s shoulders are shaking from where she’s turned with her back towards them.

“You can’t,” Arthur begins, and stops abruptly, shaking his head as if confused. When he looks at Merlin again, his eyes are wide and dazed. “You can’t say that… to me.”

It’s as if the air has shifted, and Merlin suddenly can’t breathe. Something’s changed, but he can’t point out what it is, but he feels as disoriented as Arthur is.

“Do I know you?” Arthur asks, almost in wonder, hand gripping his guitar tightly like a lifeline.

“No, and I sure can say whatever the bloody hell I want,” Merlin manages. “It’s not like you’re royalty.”

Arthur’s face breaks into a grin, and the confusion slips from his expression. “Oh, so I can’t get you to bend over backwards for me?” He teases.

Merlin’s about had enough. “Other people usually bend over for me, your highness,” he says, in the huskiest voice he can make out, and has the pleasure of seeing Arthur sputter. “If you’re really good, we’ll see if we can forgo the spanking.”

“Okay,” Morgana coughs, playing a chord on her bass. “Let’s get started. We’ll go with the first song on the list and just jam. Feel free to improv.”

As the bassline starts, slow pulls on E and B, Arthur moves a little closer to where Merlin’s standing. Merlin pretends to not see Morgana and Gwen watching them like hawks. “What do you want?” He whispers, improvising the chords. 

“You’re mental,” Arthur hisses out. “What’s your name?”

Merlin laughs, throaty. “It’s Merlin.”

“I’ll fucking remember you,” Arthur vows as he steps back to his spot, starting to play, eyes still fixed on Merlin’s. 

“I’m so scared,” Merlin mouths back at him, and then deliberately improvises a complicated series of running notes in a melody he came up with on the spot before raising an eyebrow at Arthur, who’s staring at him in shock. “You were saying?”

“Son of a bitch,” Arthur breathes, and then Merlin gets lost in the song, enjoying himself and how he’s got Arthur completely gobsmacked. 

Morgana laughs in delight over her microphone. “He can play! Beautifully, too.” She crows. “I told you, Arthur.”

Arthur just scowls and doesn’t look up for the rest of the song. Merlin grins at Gwen and Morgana, who both give him the thumbs up when it’s done. “Welcome aboard, Merlin.”

“Thanks,” Merlin says, and tries to keep a straight face when Gwen nudges Arthur.

“Yeah,” Arthur mumbles, brows furrowed, ignoring when Gwen and Morgana sidle past him to go outside the studio for a smoke. “That wasn’t too bad, I guess.”

What a little brat. “You really can’t stand to be a decent human being, can you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Merlin rolls his eyes and places his palm against the wall, pushing Arthur back against it. “Why are you being such an ass to me?” He asks, quietly. “I barely know you, I don’t think I’ve wronged you or anything.”

“Shut up,” Arthur snipes, pushing against Merlin’s shoulder with one shaky hand. “I just can’t shake the feeling I—”

“Arthur.” He lowers his voice. That crackling tension is back, that strange gravitation from earlier that pushes him towards Arthur. Why? “Does any of this seem familiar to you?”

“What?” Caught off-guard, Arthur jerks and tries to move past Merlin. “You’re weird. Piss off, I want to get a fag too—”

And then Arthur's panicked words are cut off when they realise how close they are, Arthur's stuttered gasps hot and quick between them, and he's so close, so fucking gorgeous up close, Merlin almost kisses him.

Almost.

But he doesn't.

“I don’t know why I,” Merlin says quickly after a heartbeat, blinking, stepping away as if burned. “I just know that I really wanted to. I don’t usually… that’s odd.”

“You’re mental,” Arthur repeats, looking for all the world like he can’t figure Merlin out. He curls his fingers, unsure, into the crinkle of Merlin's shirt, as if he can't decide whether pull Merlin down or shove him away. “I feel like I’ve met you before. I really, really think we…” He leans in, fits himself haphazardly into the little crooked space where Merlin’s neck meets his shoulder, but doesn't quite dare to touch, just lets a flicker of tongue nearly flash across a collarbone while Merlin’s breath catches. “Where? How?”

Merlin pulls back and runs a hand through his hair. “I really don’t know,” he says helplessly, but all he can think about when he sees Arthur like this, brash and unrepentant and wide-eyed, is how much he  _wants_.

This is _ridiculous_.

He tries to school himself into some semblance of composure and speaks abruptly. “You’re friends with Morgana on Facebook?”

“Yeah.” Arthur seems taken aback by that, coming to his own senses. He adjusts his shirt and pointedly looks at Merlin as if indicating him to move away from Arthur. Merlin acquiesces and tucks his hands into his pockets.

“I… Add me, will you? Just. I’ll add you to the band’s Facebook group.”

The laughter bubbling in Merlin's throat is just a little hysterical. “Sure.”

The girls are talking outside, their voices louder now. Arthur puts down his guitar, turns to Merlin, turns to the door, and turns to Merlin again. It would be funny if what just occurred in the studio wasn't so surreal. “I’m just going to join them,” he says, a little awkward, fumbling in his pocket for a lighter or something. 

Merlin swallows. “Fine.”

When the door swings shut behind Arthur, he feels his knees give before he stumbles and falls to sit on a stool.

“What just happened?”


End file.
